1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to improving the user experience when printing through a cloud-printing system.
2. Background
With the proliferation of web-connected mobile devices, such as those running Google Chrome® OS and other mobile operating systems, it is not feasible to build and maintain complex print subsystems and print drivers for each platform. Current cloud-printing solutions, including one offered by Google®, are aimed at creating a seamless printing experience that is device independent and that does not require the installation of hardware specific printer drivers. The goal of current cloud-printing systems is to build a printing experience that enables any application (web, desktop, or mobile) on any device to print to any printer anywhere in the world.
Recently, Microsoft® introduced a new XML based print schema to address the problems associated with communication between the print subsystem and external applications. The print schema technology uses an XML based public schema to describe printer capabilities, device configurations, and job formatting settings. Applications can use the XML based schema to provide a print ticket along with the print data to detail required printer configurations. Additionally, user specified printer setting options (e.g. paper size, color, borderless, stapled, etc.) can be detailed in the print ticket.
However, the print ticket received by the printer through the cloud-print service may not be a valid print ticket. This may result in unexpected behavior or in the print job not being rendered on the printer at all, depending on the selected printer setting options. In order to prevent this, the print ticket must be validated. The validating process can result in the validated print ticket including very different printer setting options from those desired by the user. In a normal printing environment these differences would be resolved through a user interface that is communicating with a printer driver where the user would be able to make changes to the invalid print ticket. However, in a cloud-print environment, this kind of user interaction is often difficult due to the constraints of either the cloud-print system or those of the sending device, e.g. limited memory, limited processing power, overhead/cost of the communications, etc.